Rachel Kramer

Deputy Chief of Party, Targeting Natural Resource Corruption

Rachel is committed to ensuring the sustainability of trade for the benefit of people and wildlife. Her work with TRAFFIC, the global wildlife trade monitoring network, focuses on strategies to stop wildlife crime. Rachel also plays a vital role in advancing technology applications for conservation, primarily through the Google-funded Wildlife Crime Technology Project.

Raised in Africa in the U.S. Foreign Service, Rachel has served three years in the Peace Corps in Madagascar where she worked on community-based conservation and development initiatives in the Makira and Marojejy landscapes. Her research at the Yale School of Forestry & Environment Studies focused on evaluating the impacts of conservation sector investments on forest-bordering communities and mapping rural household economies.

Rachel is passionate about mobilizing the public and private sectors to sustain biodiversity for future generations. Her interest in the nexus between wild species and global trade led her to TRAFFIC and WWF.

“I have experienced first-hand the real and positive impacts on communities and wild species when conservation priorities and markets are successfully wedded. Sustainable use of resources is vital to a living planet.”

What I’m Working on Now

A new trade study led by TRAFFIC, with support from World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW), has established a baseline for the status of the US elephant ivory market around the time that a series of changes to federal regulations were imposed by the US Fish and Wildlife Service.

A rapid assessment by TRAFFIC of selected domestic ivory markets in the U.S. finds that state bans appear to be having an impact on reducing the open availability of elephant ivory in formerly significant urban markets.